Human Stupidity, Part I
Sometimes, there's a story that causes people to stand up and say something. This is one of those moments. I caught this article when I was looking at my news stories in the morning on Slashdot (http:/slashdot.org):
Woman Claims Ubuntu Kept Her From Online Classes
stonedcat writes "A Wisconsin woman has claimed that Dell computers and Ubuntu have kept her from going back to school via online classes. She says she has called Dell to request Windows instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn't install her Verizon online disk to access the Internet, nor could she use Microsoft Word to type up her papers."
(pulled from http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/15/158216)
So here we have a prototypical case where a computer user who is unfamiliar with a new operating system has trouble with her computer because it's not what she's used to. I can accept that. Then, I proceed to read the article (Something rarely heard of on Slashdot...)
"Schubert says she ordered her laptop online at Dell.com expecting to buy your classic bread-and-butter computer. She didn't realize until the next morning her laptop defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system."
Now, it has been a long time since I've graced the front page of the dell.com website, but I took this as an opportunity to see just how uncannily difficult it is for a normal user to just happen to not realize what they were getting as an operating system. Go ahead and try for yourself: http://www.dell.com
Not what you'd expect someone to just stumble upon as an option, and not realize what they were getting into. The next tidbit I found interesting too:
But she says Dell discouraged her. "The person I was talking to said Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed," said Schubert. So she stuck with it.
I would take this to be not exactly face value either. I can understand the point of view of her at this point - she has something she's not used to, and she wants it traded for something she understands. It's not the "magic box," (more on that in a bit) so she's trying to get something she can use. This is the only point in this story where I can see that Dell, the business, screwed up. If you have a customer replacing something for a reason, don't try to persuade them otherwise. However, something sits at the back of my head thinking, "I wonder if the phone tech was merely letting her know that what she has can work, and that there was probably a fee required to send her current laptop back to replace it. Not wanting to pay the fee, she just went with it." Purely speculation, but if I was a general consumer, I wouldn't want to have to pay more to get the right thing on my laptop, and since I was told it can work, I'd go ahead with that.
But wait, the story continues to get better:
Later, she discovered Ubuntu might look like Windows, but it doesn't always act like it.
Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won't load, so she can't access the internet. She also can't install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC's online classes.
As a result, with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC's fall and spring semesters.
Again, some understandable issues due to the "magic box" effect. This effect is the belief of the general population that without any type of training ahead of time, a person can automatically pick up and use a heavily technical device, and have no knowledge of the inner workings of that device. Example: she thought that by throwing in the cd and clicking the "exe" file, it would make her network work, with no real understanding of what's executing and being ran. It is my personal belief that there are certain things that someone should know about operating a computer before they get the chance to - and this should be happening in the school system. I don't have time for that discussion now, but I'll knock it out at a later point.
Anyway, we've reached "well, duh!" moment number 2. Because she wasn't able to use what was prescribed, she dropped out of classes? There are other alternatives here, like contacting the school's tech support - I could find it, and it didn't take that long.
Another thing caught my eye reading through this. Earlier in the article, it states that "She called Dell the very next day and says the representative told her there was still time to change back to Windows." Later in the article, it says different: "She also says Dell claimed it was now too late to get Windows and any changes she made herself would void her warranty."
So, how much time really passed between these two statements? Or is the return time different between a very short amount of time? Something doesn't quite add up here.
There are other points that I could make about this (read the comments on Slashdot, they've got some poignant statements), but I'll leave you off with this thought. She decided to no longer enroll at MATC - the Madison Area Technical College. I guess things got too technical.
